This week I did a ton of work on the next chapter of Shattered Skies. It’s looking like 35 and 36 are going to essentially be a two-parter, but if that’s the case, 36 will definitively end the “Rescue Arc” that’s been in progress since last January (!!!) I have something huge in mind for finishing off the arc, something I’ve been looking forward to writing for a long time… now the question is, where do I put the cutoff point? I’m thinking it should be right after Joker reveals that the mysterious artifact first mentioned in Chapter 29 is actually the [REDACTED], but we’ll see.

Minor changes to my Patreon: I’ve introduced a new $2-per-chapter reward tier, which gets you access to my private Discord server with an associated role. You also get this reward at the higher tiers, of course. Signal boost, please!

Some of you may have seen that I started a new LP on my YouTube channel last week: I’m doing a full playthrough of Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time. I would have announced this in advance, but until last Tuesday I wasn’t sure if the game was actually coming out on Steam on time or not. Bamco, I’ve noticed, has a really bad habit when it comes to their smaller releases: they don’t get pages on digital distribution services until the actual day of the launch. The same thing happened with Accel World vs. Sword Art Online last year, so I should have expected this. Sigh. Anyway, what I’ve played of the game so far is really fun, and it’s great to see Akko and the gang again. I’ll be playing every Wednesday night until I finish the game, which puts the Overwatch OverWednesday streams on hold for a while. I’ll miss the new anniversary event, but eh.

And speaking of streams on hold: sorry, but there will be no streams this Friday or Sunday night. I have a job coming up this weekend which promises to be taxing, so I won’t have the time or energy to give streaming my all. Many apologies; I’ll do longer streams in the week following to make up for it.

That’s about it for me. Please remember to go check out LeiLani’s The Depths and vote for it on topwebcomics.com by clicking the link.

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The bad news is, due to an extremely hectic month that included working overtime on Spring Break, getting sick, and catastrophic computer failure all within the same three weeks, it looks like there won’t be a Tasakeru chapter ready for the month of April.That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I’m now lowering the entry reward level even further than before!

Now a pledge of just ONE dollarper chapter will get your name in the print edition of a forthcoming book!

I apologize for the lack of updates, I’m really trying to make up for it in the next few weeks! Please bear with me.

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I’ve made some much-needed adjustments to the Reward Tiers. Admittedly, I think the entry level was too high, so now the Ashigaru Tier starts at a $2 per chapter pledge.

The Samurai and Daimyo Tiers have also been adjusted, to $30 and $60 per chapter. All rewards are still the same. The price gets you FREE merchandise, shipping included, with personal messages and/or autographs available for the Daimyo Tier.

– BHS

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Well, this was an improvement. I hesitate to say that things are looking up, but there’s no doubt they’re looking better. As you can see up there, I grabbed my second Patron, whose generous pledge has put me within striking distance of my first goal! That inspired me to get Chapter 2 of Soulsnatcher finished, and I’m particularly proud of the changes this one’s gone through as of the relaunch.

As you might also notice: I’ve made some adjustments to my Patreon’s reward tiers. The first tier now starts at $20 per chapter, which gets you acknowledgement in the future print editions of the Tasakeru books. I’ve also added the acknowledgement to the second tier, along with the free item of merch, for a $40 pledge. The third tier is now $80 for an acknowledgement, two merch items (with autographs and personal messages by request), and a private Q&A session with me in the format of your choice.

Of course, you don’t have to pledge $20 if you don’t want to… the minimum is $1 per chapter, and I’m sincerely grateful for any pledges at all, frankly. Since I can’t offer the kinds of incentives other Patreons do, I have to sell this thing on the merits of the work itself… it’s always nice to see somebody confirming that it does have merit.

So. KiraKira Precure A La Mode started yesterday. As I said in my status update and my Tumblr post on Sunday night: yes, it’s better than Mahou Tsukai, thank God, but at this early stage it’s also making some interesting departures from the standard formula… departures for the better, it looks like. Frankly, any improvements over MTPC are welcome. I’m so, so glad that Ichika/Cure Whip isn’t a personality-less cardboard cutout like Mirai/Cure Miracle, and that the episode’s fight scene was not only decently animated but clever, with some unexpected moves and neat camera angles that I wasn’t expecting. I also appreciated the return of two of my favorite Precure franchise running gags: accidentally jumping a thousand feet high when making the first dodge in Cure form, and the universe hitting the pink Cure in the face with random objects. Slapstick may not be the highest form of comedy, but it’s always encouraging to see it utilized well, and those two gags are so familiar to long-time fans like me that they were almost like an apology for the past year, like Toei was saying “We get it, we’re sorry, things will be better now.”

Yes, the dessert theming is pretty silly, but it manages to be silly in a charming way, rather than MTPC’s bland, generic cuteness. Believe it or not, the series with the sweets motif looks to be less sugary than its predecessor, if you’ll pardon the pun. Just in the first episode, there’s already been a surprisingly melancholy turn from Ichika, when she learns her world-traveling doctor mother won’t be able to make it home to share the shortcake she worked so hard on… now that feels real and compelling in a way that MTPC’s “all cute, all the time” aesthetic never did.

Look, I’m not expecting great art here. Precure, at its heart, is Power Rangers for girls: it’s a vehicle to sell toys and merch first and foremost, with everything else secondary. Despite that, though, the Precure franchise has managed to have moments of surprising depth, even beauty. The best of them have had fantastic character development in addition to the obligatory sparkly transformations, dramatic speeches and poses, and monster-pummeling fight scenes. I’ll take Madoka Magica (and, I’d argue, Cardcaptor Sakura, and most of most versions of Sailor Moon, with some well-known caveats) as the shining examples of what the genre can be… for Precure, I’ll settle for harmless fluff as long as it’s entertaining harmless fluff. Sometimes, as with Heartcatch and Go! Princess, it’s far more than that. It’s too early to tell whether KKPCALM (God, that acronym) will be one of the greats or just a fun way to spend each week, but I have my hopes up.

And that’s about it. I watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens again, with my mom this time, and… what else is there to say, really? It’s still a fantastic film, and for me it held up just as well the third time as it did the first two. I didn’t find out until about fifteen minutes in that Mom has never seen the original trilogy, though… so that’s one of my projects for the coming weeks.

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I’ve been mulling over the concept of launching a Patreon for at least a year now, but I decided it’s finally time to go ahead with it. I can’t really offer much in the way of rewards right now, but when/if I get pledges of $15 or more per chapter, I’ll be able to put the Tasakeru soundtrack up on Soundcloud for download. If I can reach that, then we’ll see what we can do from there. This is all still experimental, but I’d appreciate if you would at least consider pledging a few bucks every month. And yes, that’s per chapter… I wouldn’t feel right accepting money during my dry spells, so I’ll only charge when new chapters get posted.

It’s been a slow week otherwise. I got my Chogokin Voltron, which you can see in my gallery… I took an entire battery’s worth of unboxing pictures too, which are up on Google Drive.

I’m getting more and more excited for Precure A La Mode. The only concern I have is with the mascot, and as long as she’s not horrible like the ones from Precure 5 or stupefyingly boring like, well, the entire cast of Mahou Tsukai, I think we’ll be good. The large amount of early fanart I’ve been seeing both here and on Pixiv is a good sign that this will be a fan favorite.

Off to watch the first ep of Trigger’s Little Witch Academia TV anime. This gon’ be good.

JUMP TO…

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Week 33 – Mirror Shards First off this week: I’m proud to announce the publication of Mirror Shards, a Shattered Skies recursive fanfiction by friend and frequent commentator/feedback-leaver ArtIdiotGuy222. AIG and I have been collaborating on this thing for several weeks now, trading ideas back and forth to make sure neither of us is stepping […]

Week 32 – Pushed Back Job’s done, finally. Once I got home on Friday, I was all set to finally start work in earnest on Episode 08 of Silent InvenTOYry… and then, 12 hours later, I threw my back out for the second time in a month. I’m more stiff now than actually in pain, […]

Chapter 3 Tenets and edicts Worrisome developments Autumn ponderings “Hayaoh’s wanderings took him to the great forest of demons in the east, where few dared tread. He was not afraid; all the warriors of the mortal world had offered him no challenge, so why should he fear demons? “By then, his legend had spread […]

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Tasakeru, tasakeru.com, and all related contents, text, and media are the Intellectual Property (IP) of BHS and BHS Productions, registered in 2009, and may not be modified, reproduced, or changed in any way, shape, or form without the author's express permission. For more information on usage rights, see the From the Author page.